Heretofore, the task of handling ammunition for large caliber artillery pieces has been highly labor intensive and time consuming. To reduce the number of military personnel required and to save time, both in terms of resupplying and loading artillery pieces, automated ammunition handling equipment has been proposed. One automation approach is equip the artillery piece, such as a self-propelled howitzer, with a magazine having a mechanized internal conveyor to convey resupplied ammunition into magazine storage and then to convey the ammunition from their magazine storage locations successively to the howitzer for loading by mechanized equipment.
To provide expeditious logistical support for the howitzer, a resupply vehicle is similarly equipped with a magazine having a mechanized internal conveyor for conveying ammunition into and out of magazine storage. The resupply vehicle and the self-propelled howitzer rendezvous in the field where the ammunition is transferred from the resupply magazine to the gun magazine. Since howitzer ammunition consists of projectiles weighing as much as one hundred pounds or more and propellant canisters in the range of twenty five to fifty pounds, mechanized equipment to handle the ammunition transfer from magazine to magazine is a vital need. Since it would be extremely difficult to arrange the resupply vehicle and the self-propelled howitzer in any pre-defined physical relation, the transfer equipment must be readily adjustable to accommodate variations in vehicle separation and angular orientation. Also, the transfer equipment must be capable of handling the ammunition in a safe and expeditious manner under adverse conditions, e.g., in the heat of battle.